Akwa Ibom invites Tinubu to commission recovered land, seeks a sea port assistant

The Akwa-Ibom state government on Friday sought the support of the federal government to build and operate the IBOM Deep Seort project.

He also demanded a presidential intervention in several ecological challenges, inviting President Bola Tinubu to commission his sport of emergence, a strip of land recovered under his anti-eagering program.

The state governor, Umo Eno, revealed these demands to the correspondents of the House of Representatives after directing a delegation of interested parties of Akwa Ibom to a meeting with the president in the ASO Rock Villa, Abuja, on Friday night.

Angry argued that the South-South of Nigeria needs a sea port that serves its population and described other sea ports, especially that of Lagos as “congested.”

He said that although his administration had begun sincere plans for installation, “no state government can only build a deep sea port.”

ENO said: “We need to collaborate with the federal government. We need the support of the FG. Therefore, we have made a request to the President to help us intervene so that Akwa Ibom has a deep water port.

“It will be a change of game for the State, for the region and, in fact, for the nation. We have a sea port of 17.2, and it is the deepest in the country. And we just need that support.

“We are building a road now in the deep port. We have another infrastructure, we have provided, but we need the FG to support us. ”

His comments occur a year after visiting President Tinubu for a similar application on January 10, 2024.

“We have spoken and requested that he supports us with our port of Ibom Deep,” he told the journalists at that time, and added “Ibom Deep Sea Port has the deepest spring that will bring ships and we can send from that point. Lagos is there. But you know that Lagos is congested. Therefore, it needs a deep port that is in charge of the southeast, Sur-Sur, the Niger delta region.”

The IBOM Deep Seort, located in the southeast of the state of Akwa Ibom, is a planned deep water installation built in a natural draft of approximately 17.5 meters, one of the deepest in the region.

Experts say that depth is a key feature that allows you to accommodate large boats and handle a variety of load, including containers, dry bulk load and liquid.

The Federal Government will possess the installation through the Ports authority of Nigeria in association with the state government of Akwa Ibom and private investors.

Although the Federal Executive Council approved the scheme business case for the public-private partnership project in May 2015, it remains without completing a decade later.

However, the past Udom Emmanuel administration said that the critical stages of project development have intervened.

Eno, who was in the town in the company of his immediate predecessor, Udom Emmanuel, said he also invited Tinubu to inaugurate the new lands recovered from the State, sports arise.

“The truth is that part of our request to the President has been for him to give us the presidential intervention. We have so many ecological problems in Akwa Ibom, Gully’s erosions almost consume even the government’s house.

“But we embarked on a very ambitious program that we demand the ecological erosion site of the Barranca and made it a complex.

“Now we have what we call ATPORT ARISE, for which I just invited its excellence, Mr. President, to order a very ambitious project, and we have asked him to also help us intervene,” explained the governor.

The delegation was composed of Senate President Godswill Akpabio, who was a former governor of the state of Akwa Ibom, Udom Emmanuel, State legislators, traditional rulers and religious leaders, youth and groups of women, among others.

“The traditional rulers took the opportunity to honor the president with the title of Headquarters, the highest of our land, Otuekong, which means the commander in chief, to demonstrate that we are with him,” he added.